sorry - new here and not to add to the questioning... but i recently bought a few pens and ink from xfountainpens.com. shipping is quite speedy - but their email response is notta. also many times you call - no answer and it cycles over to a hold pattern for 5-10' each for 2-3 times and hangs up. I had a bad pen and tried to rectify the issue - but no clue where we stand - and then today I see a double charge and that should never have happened. wrote 2 emails last night and will see what happens.

on the flip side - so to speak, I wrote goulet a few times and get a pretty speedy response overall.

So are they legit or a bit shady?

and please - I am not bashing - just enquiring. I may have to find another place...

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XFountain pens sells Jinhao pens under their own brand name. So, to answer your question, no they are not legit. They are simply re-branding. I have owned a couple of Jinhao pens and will never own another. The nib dries out overnight on all the Jinhao pens that I have owned.

I've bought stuff from them several times. I've had mixed results with their pens--but then I've had mixed results with Jinhao pens regardless of where I've bought them; so no more of those for me. On a more positive note, I've had no problems at all with ordering ink from Xfountainpens, esp. during one of their sales (their Chesterfield brand of ink is repackaged Diamine). My orders have been fulfilled in good time and arrived well-packaged. (No connex.)

I ordered a pen from them and received it with no problem. It's labeled as "Bulow", but it is clearly a Jinhao. I don't, however, think that this is shady. There are many companies who purchase products from suppliers and re-brand them as their own. For instance, I have on my desk a calculator branded as "Staples" brand after the office supply store. At the same time, I would speculate that the office supply store didn't manufacture the calculator, but rather purchased it from a supplier and re-branded with their name. Undoubtedly, there is some sort of contract or agreement that allows them to do this. There is nothing wrong or shady about it. I make the same assumption about xfountainpens. There is the very real possibility that the pens are manufactured by Jinhao under the other brand name, Bulow, in place at the request of the brand as part of a purchase agreement. They may come out of the factory that way. Of course, this is all speculation on my part. In any case, the pen I purchased was cheaply made, but is a very smooth writer.

For your first pen, you should buy a Pelikan m200 or a TWSBI 540.
For vintage, get a Parker Vacumatic or a 51.
Once you go Vac, you never go back.
Yes, I've been drinking.

Ok thank you. I just bought a pen from Todd at isellpens.com. Nice guy. I was impressed about the ink prices at xfountainpens though. but not a great selection. I will use my judgement about the info you people provided. Thank you again.

I had to call multiple times to get a hold of anyone. the emails they do not respond to. H checked into it and said that if the 2nd charge goes through - they would take care of it. shows up on my visa site but their records show nothing for a 2nd charge on sunday after it was already charged on saturday. so we will see. Not sure what the guys name is - He never told me the few times we talked. I did buy a nice pen from Todd (isellpens) though - not that i needed another one but hopefully it is a better pen overall. now to get a few more bottles of ink....

Addendum: just received my 2 new pens - one a different kind for a defective one i got. but the ink they sent me was not turquoise - it was a greenish tourmaline. sent them 2 emails because sick of calling so we shall wee what happens... weird eh?

My sole experience with Xfountainpens a couple of years ago was not positive. I ordered one of the SRX Galaxie pens of some color and shape or another. The pen was really heavy, the paint was chipped on arrival, and worst of all, the pen had the ink flow of a turtle and it took a lot of work to get the flow started. I think the nib would have been OK if I could have ever got any ink to flow trough it. I just threw it away and took the $10 loss.

However, your experience may vary. They do a pretty good job of advertising their product though.

My sole experience with Xfountainpens a couple of years ago was not positive. I ordered one of the SRX Galaxie pens of some color and shape or another. The pen was really heavy, the paint was chipped on arrival, and worst of all, the pen had the ink flow of a turtle and it took a lot of work to get the flow started. I think the nib would have been OK if I could have ever got any ink to flow trough it. I just threw it away and took the $10 loss.

However, your experience may vary. They do a pretty good job of advertising their product though.

I'm sorry to hear that, The couple of times I ordered from them the sale was fine and the pen shipped quickly!

My sole experience with Xfountainpens a couple of years ago was not positive. I ordered one of the SRX Galaxie pens of some color and shape or another. The pen was really heavy, the paint was chipped on arrival, and worst of all, the pen had the ink flow of a turtle and it took a lot of work to get the flow started. I think the nib would have been OK if I could have ever got any ink to flow trough it. I just threw it away and took the $10 loss.

However, your experience may vary. They do a pretty good job of advertising their product though.

I'm sorry to hear that, The couple of times I ordered from them the sale was fine and the pen shipped quickly!

Add me to the list of people who are struggling to get an order fulfilled from xfountainpens.com.I haven't tried calling, but I eventually get email responses stating that the pen I ordered will be shipped ASAP.What a mess, but this is just one buyer's experience. Nevertheless, I thought I'd add my voice to the chorus.

Ironically, I am familiar with the concept of rebadging Chinese goods from my life in music.Brass instruments made by Jinbao [not Jinhao ;-)]appear under numerous brand names and are of highly variable quality. Just one letter difference between fountain pens and tubas!!

In any event, I have seen some alternatives to xfountainpens on this thread and I intend to investigate them. This is my first post here, but I have learned much by reading for just a few minutes...thanks!

If you insist on dealing with Xfountainpens do so through Amazon Marketplace. You have recourse and a big gorilla on your side in the form of Amazon Customer Service. Amazon is generally very good at keeping their Marketplace vendors on the up-and-up.

I ordered an Xpen and got a rebranded Jihhao X750. It was an okay transaction which I'm not in a particular hurry to repeat.

Went to the xfountainpens.com website out of curiousity and found rebranded Jinhao pens at 4x their normal cost. Worse yet, the exact same pen was rebranded twice on the same page, once for $40 and again for $13. Disgusting.

Reference post 13 above
The pen came today.
It seems to be OK.
No inkflow problems so far with the extra-fine "Knox" nib.

Let's see how it holds up.

If my experience with brass instruments holds true,
the Chinese pen manufacturers will improve quality over
time and eventually come pretty close to the real thing.

Right now the best Chinese brass instruments have 9x% or so of
the quality of American or European counterparts at 3x% or so of the cost.
To reach that point took less that 10 years.

How long has Jin Hao been making pens? Does anyone know if Jin Hao
is working with an AMerican or European company on product design and
materials? I'm very curious to see if Chinese fountain pens are following
the same path as Chinese tubas!!

Finally, does anyone know what Jin Hao means? I'm curious, since many of
the musical instruments are from Jin Bao or Jin Yin.

In any event, in fairness to xfountainpens, my purchase did arrive and
seems to be OK in quality after a bit of writing.

The only negative experience I have had with xfountainpens has been that there was a delay with redeeming a gift certificate I was supposed to receive for my birthday. Because of this problem, the xfountainpens staff gave me a free 50ml bottle of ink along with my purchase.

I have only ever contacted them through email for customer service. I have always received replies fairly quickly (on week days - it says on their website that they don't offer services on weekends) and as such have never needed to call by phone. Their shipping is fast and pretty much always free (it's easy to spend $15 ordering anything fountain pen related.) They often include free items (usually ink) with larger orders (sometimes smaller ones as well.) So, when using my gift certificate, I got two free 50ml bottles of good ink when purchasing a Parker IM - which is my favorite overall pen in my collection.

As for the quality of their products, the ink has always been good quality for me. Medium wetness flow and good performance even on cheap copy paper. Only one of their inks, "obsidian," ever disagreed with one of my pens. The pens are a different story. I have owned or tried from their site the following...

Bulow: x49, x450, x530, and x750. Very smooth nibs, some flow issues that could probably be fixed with some tinkering. Finishes on the x450's weren't great quality.

Staffen: SRX Galaxie Novae, SG2400, and SG2500. Nibs weren't quite as smooth, but the feeds were a bit better. Finishes were better as well, except for the paint that rubbed off of the Galaxie.

Overall I am a very satisfied customer, though I have not ordered from xfountainpens in a while.

From what I can tell, the site is a relatively solid one that mostly delivers. Whether or not you feel their items are worth what they charge is another matter. I'd have serious issues buying pens from them for those prices because I know I can do a lot better myself on eBay or other places, and I wouldn't really be interested in the ink unless I could get more definitive information about what one of their colors corresponds to what Diamine color name.

I am getting very interested in buying some of their nibs for playing around with in Noodler's Ahab pens.

Addendum: just received my 2 new pens - one a different kind for a defective one i got. but the ink they sent me was not turquoise - it was a greenish tourmaline. sent them 2 emails because sick of calling so we shall wee what happens... weird eh?

I had very similar results from Customer Service, (if it even exists!) trying to get a response about a defective pen. I finally trashed it. Maybe they figure they can out wait you. They did me.

That said, I have an x750 that writes superbly, an x450 I like, and I had some ink from Chesterfield that didn't match the displayed colors on screen. I gave the ink away. It's a mixed bag with them. Stick with the traditional places, like isellpens or goulet or one of the many other good reliable sources.

They often send me free stuff when I do order from them, but for various reasons (products and pricing offered, customer service) most of my recent and future orders have been/will be with better dealers - either through Amazon or with the Goulets. The only thing I see myself getting again from xfountainpens will be Knox nibs from my Noodler's pens - the order came about a week after the order, so I don't have much to complain about.

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